Nanoscale dynamics of MEMS TFC active slider

Abstract

With enabling of a thermal actuator, an air bearing slider can fly at sub-nanometer level spacing on a magnetic disk while the recording elements are functioning. At such spacing, the slider stability and head-disk interface reliability remains to be understood. In this study, a novel understanding on dynamics of the MEMS thermal flying-height control (TFC) slider in touchdown process is developed. By using average and variational-iteration methods, closed-form spectrum estimations of slider vibration are derived. The derived formulation offers an insight of the relationship between spectrum and interface parameters. Physics-based simulation is also conducted to quantify the spectrum of slider vibrations as a function of varied interfacial parameters. To further extend the analytical and numerical analysis, the experimental study of a TFC slider while flying on a rotating disk at sub-nanometer spacing are performed. The analysis reveals the dominance of the air bearing force among other interfacial forces at sub-nanometer spacing.